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Sunday, October 28, 2012

Mercury’s Upcoming Retrograde



 Planet Mercury as photographed by the Mariner 10 spacecraft
(photo credit: NASA-JPL)

As Mercury enters Sagittarius on Monday, October 29th at 6:19 in the morning (UT/+0), life is signaling that this is a time to think things through as we do whatever we do. After passing through the intensity of Scorpio emotional waters where Mercury forces us to think through emotionally provocative situations (or how we feel about things), Mercury tends to rebound into Sagittarius like a spring releasing giant tension.

But from that – often – comes our mistakes. The joy and joie de vivre is great indeed, but with that comes the (ahem…cough, cough) commentary that dancing is swell so long as you don’t dance off a cliff.
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Very few of us are Wile E Coyote, after all – and life is definitely not a Warner Brother’s cartoon, even if sometimes it seems like one!

Sagittarius is a sign all about achieving our aims. Sagittarius ‘reaches’ for the top of the chart – and thus all the symbols you find positioned in Sagittarius or in Sagittarius’ native 9th house of your chart are the things which will challenge you along the way. I know one person with an Aries Mercury in the 9th and this person is notorious for talking, never getting around to doing, and screwing up their plans in the process. I know one man whose Sagittarius Sun represents his life struggle with the questions of assertion, authority and taking hard stands.

Like I say…anything in the 9th, anything positioned natally in Sagittarius – those are the things life will leave on the floor just so that we’re sure to trip over them from time to time.

As important to us here (as the whole world now enters approximately five weeks of Mercury in Sagittarius ‘have you thought it through?’ situations) is that Mercury will go retrograde during these next weeks ahead. (Hence its transit of Sagittarius taking five weeks instead of less than half that.)

A note here for Americans and USA election watchers: the 2012 Presidential Election (read: voting day) falls on Mercury’s date of station/retrograde. That says a lot – which is maybe not so much about the election as about how Americans go about electing, voting and the rest of such matters.

And yes, Mercury goes retrograde on November 6th elsewhere in the world too. It will be in retrograde until November 26th…which again for Americans means you’re going to have a Mercury retrograde-tinged Thanksgiving and Black Friday. (Leave extra time for travel and all that.) But most globally and to the point, because of Mercury retrograde, that ‘five weeks’ of Mercury in Sagittarius is going to be spread over a full two months.



Last but certainly not least here is the fact that the next Solar Eclipse is going to happen while Mercury is in retrograde - in Sagittarius. At the moment of the eclipse, Mercury will be at 0 Sagittarius, a degree filled with the potential to have our opinions (thoughts, ideas) swayed someone else. With Mercury in retrograde, this may indicate a moment when we think about what people say versus what they really mean (or) who they really are.

Then again, maybe it’s a moment when we deal/don’t deal with some tendency we have to con ourselves?
That being true, apart from whatever else it may be (which would be plenty), this incoming eclipse may be all about how we allow others to egg, goad, persuade, manipulate or otherwise demand that we do things xyz way…or else?

And is that ‘or else’ real? Or does it really matter?

One of the really good things a Solar Eclipse at 21 Scorpio could do is get us past our fears of what someone else says or thinks about us. At that point we are at least being individuals (though we still may need to clean up our act!).

So that’s on the plus side. Of course, it’s only ten or so hours after the eclipse until Mercury retrogrades back into Scorpio, so it’s likely this is going to be a trying time in some way, shape or form. To have Mercury doing a ‘loop’ back into-and-through Scorpio from Sagittarius – at some level – says to us that it pays to be aware of how important it is to feel secure about ourselves as we move forward in life doing anything. And how it isn’t necessarily about ‘changing’ the other person’s point of view which is important, merely understanding whether your perspective and theirs can coexist in the given dynamic.

Where that works, we go on. We check it out, we have some discussions, we tweak the personal formula and once Mercury goes direct on November 26th, we refocus on getting things in Scorpio gear…
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…to be followed by Life delivering it’s check points and reviews as we swing into Mercury-in-Sagittarius application mode beginning on December 11th.

With Mercury not moving into Capricorn until New Year’s Eve (UT/+0 time), that means the whole holiday season is going to be under the influence of the hustle-and-bustle, try, try again Mercury in Sagittarius which may feel very focused on others, but which is really all about how our life interfaces with others…and our greater world.

So happy Mercury in Sagittarius to all of us! After saying all this I sort of feel like as of October 29th we’re all starting out along some sort of Yellow Brick Road which carries us through the end of 2012.

And maybe that’s just what we’re doing. So get your brains together, have courage, don’t forget the little dog, have a heart…and when in doubt (which yes, alas will happen!) remember that if whatever you’re searching for can’t be found in your own back yard, you never really lost it to begin with.

That last statement is – of course – a paraphrase from the famous ending to MGM’s ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ Most of us tend to think of that ‘back yard’ as being our home, our family.

 A publicity still for MGM's film 'The Wizard of Oz' here features Jack Haley as the Tin Man, Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow, Judy Garland as Dorothy and Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion. Evidently the studio still photographs from that era (1939) were not copyrighted as the film was, and are considered to be (more or less) public domain. Early trailers also fall under this provision, though all this changed somewhere along the line.This may mean nothing to you, but it's an interesting manifestation of the shift from the age of trust and emotional universality (the Age of Pisces) into the 'universal worth'/intellectual rights Age of Aquarius we now live in.

But is it really?

What if it’s our life? Then isn’t your ‘back yard’ who you know you should be being…you know, in the back of your brain? In your heart?

Do you have the courage to go there?
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